Thursday, August 1, 2013

Bahrain: blogger and journalist aide arrested

Bahrain: Arrest of blogger and media fixer Mohamed Hassan

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights expresses grave concern in regards to the recent arrest of blogger and media fixer
Mohamed Hassan (27) during a dawn raid on his home. His whereabouts
and charges are still unknown and he has not made any communication with
family and lawyer until the time of writing this report.

At around 3am on 31 July 2013, masked men in civilian clothes
belonging to the Ministry of Interior raided the house of
blogger Mohammed Hassan and arrested him after presenting an arrest
warrant but without giving any justification for the arrest or the
charges pressed against him. They also confiscated his electronic
devices.

This is not the first time blogger Mohammed Hassan is targeted by the authorities in Bahrain.

Mohammed Hassan, also known as @Safybh, was known for expressing his views on twitter and on his blog http://safybh.wordpress.com/ in support of the struggle for freedom and democracy in Bahrain. He stopped tweeting and blogging since April 2013.

Hassan was arrested before on 21 April 2012
while he was escorting reporters to protesting villages to show them
the violations of the authorities against peaceful protesters. He was
hit with a gun barrel in his leg and reportedly severely beaten before
getting arrested. He was denied access to a lawyer, and released the
next day. He was then arrested again on 22 April 2012 at a checkpoint in
Sanabis with journalist Colin Freeman from The Sunday
Telegraph. They were taken to the Exhibition Center police station.
Hassan was interrogated about his connection to the journalist and they
were later released without any charges.

In June 2012 Mohammed Hassan was summoned for interrogation, and was
accused with three charges: writing for websites and newspapers without a
license, illegal gathering and tweeting. He wrote later on his twitter:
"They asked me about all tweets, even the ones where I say goodnight, I was also questioned about the articles I write and the journalists I know, especially when I was arrested and beaten last April. I was accused of
calling for “unlicensed" marches when I invited people to [participate
in] Nabeel Rajab’s “Thank you” march, [the] problem is: it was actually
licensed. After asking a lawyer I realized that I was correct about not needing a license for blogging or writing an op-ed for a website."